Avid increases capacity of Unity ISIS system

Avid announced the latest version (2.0) of its Unity ISIS media network solution, which facilitates real-time HD collaboration among 330 client workstation users who have access to 384TB of storage.

Protecting against system downtime, the new system enables users to connect multiple editing systems, working in various HD uncompressed frame rates, with each accessing multiple streams at the same time. This gives users immediate and simultaneous access to media by combining offline and online workflows on a single system. Previously this could only be done with SCSI storage system. The new Unity ISIS system leverages SATA drives for lower cost.

Unity ISIS is a blade-based storage subsystem with dual drive storage elements, 10Gb/s Ethernet switching and redundant power and cooling. It supports resolutions up to uncompressed HD and 2K via up to 400MB/s per engine. It scales to maximum performance by storing data across 12 engines of 4.8GB/s or a total of 32 streams of uncompressed HD or 240 streams of compressed HD.

The system architecture is completely scalable, providing a total capacity of 384TB (maximum) or 196TB (when fully mirrored), with full system monitoring. In mirrored mode, this will allow customers to store up to 300 hours of uncompressed HD or 6300 hours of 50MB/s compressed HD.

ISIS 2.0 offers the ability to self-balance itself by distributing data and metadata so that each intelligent storage element can make instant decisions that collectively optimize the performance, capacity and health of the entire system. The system also automatically adapts to component failures and replacements without delay, and provides uninterrupted availability and performance, allowing customers in broadcast, film or post-production environments to save time and money.